I just read an article on the Bloomberg Website that said Google is giving employees G1 mobile phones instead of cash this year as their year end Christmas bonus. The article says:

"About 85 percent of workers will get a handset powered by Google’s Android operating system as a holiday gift, said the person, who asked not to be identified. Google handed out $1,000 cash gifts to most employees last year."

Eric Schmidt , Google's Chief Executive Officer, said as recently as last month that Google was seeking to control expenses as the global slump financial slump continues. T-Mobile began marketing the Google phone as their alternative to Apple's iPhone in October, 2008.

Using the powerful open source mobile operating system, T-Mobile's G1 was the first Google Android Mobile Phone. Now, a virtually unknown company named Kogan from Australia is launching the second!

The new Agora mobile handset will be available in Standard and Pro models and will be priced at $225 and $295 respectively. Release date of Kogan Agora is 29th January 2009 but you can now pre-order both models.

Features of Kogan Agora Google Android Phone:

2.5-inch TFT-LCD flat touch-sensitive screen.

Integrated QWERTY keyboard

High-speed 3G network connection

One-Touch Google Search

Easy Web Browsing

Easy-to-use email with attachment support for images, videos, music and documents

The T-Mobile G1, also known as the Google Android Phone, is the first mobile device to operate on the Google Android open source mobile software platform (hence the name Google Android Project). Open source, with the idea that anyone can create an application on the Android platform staggers the mind.

According to Dan Frommer, Motorola is restructuring their entire mobile phone portfolio around Android, and they are planning to launch Android phones just in time for Christmas!

Christmas 2009...

Not until next Christmas season, co-CEO Sanjay Jha said on this morning's Q3 earnings call. That's later than the "sometime in the second quarter of 2009" that BusinessWeek reported earlier this month.

With the Christmas '09 announcement, Motorola is clearly moving at a much SLOWER pace than we’d prefer, and their timeline does not take possible delays into account. But as Gizmodo properly points out, Android is supposed to make the lives of manufacturers EASIER, and to their credit they are at least being honest and up front about timelines and goals.

Timing is everything, and I’m not sure if Christmas 2009 is even worth counting on yet.

There is a lot riding on the success or failure of T-Mobile's G1 Android phone. In a number of ways, the G1 carries the collective hopes of Linux, open source and Google fans everywhere. It's open, it's collaborative, and it's community-based - everything the iPhone and Windows Mobile are not.

The T-Mobile description says:

"Experience the Web just like on your computer, wherever you are with your T-Mobile G1. The browser makes your web experience fluid and natural by integrating it with other applications and features on your phone. Click on a phone number from a website, and your phone will dial it. Save images from the web as wallpaper. The list goes on and on."

The G1 delivers on Google Android's promises:

An Android phone allows you to browse the Internet just as you would on a normal computer.

Android allows you to run several applications at the same time - on one phone.

The Google Android phone allows you to chat and share photos on applications such as Yahoo Messenger, Google, Talk, etc.

The Android Phone Allows you to copy URLs and share them with friends via a live chat line while using a simple touch-screen interface.